CPM RSS BJP Janasangh alliance

 CPM RSS BJP Janasangh alliance 

Was Congress or CPM more pally with RSS? Debate rages

Onmanorama Staff Published: July 14, 2022 09:5...

Read more at: https://www.onmanorama.com/news/kerala/2022/07/14/congress-cpm-on-rss-kerala-assembly.html

Thiruvananthapuram: A day after Opposition Leader V D Satheesan charged him with soliciting RSS votes to win in 1977, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan came to the Assembly on Thursday armed with his version of history. However, since they had staged a boycott, the Opposition UDF was not present. in the House to poke holes in Pinarayi's arguments.

Satheesan's basic charge was that the CPM was in alliance with Jan Sangh, the forerunner of the BJP, during the 1977 Assembly elections that took place right after the Emergency.

Pinarayi said the CPM was then part of the broad anti-Congress alliance forged by the Janata Party led by Jayaprakash Narayan to oppose the Emergency and the reign of terror unleashed by Congress. He said Jan Sangh had also later joined this national alliance after dissolving the party. "All parties like the Socialist Party, Swatantra Party, Praja Socialist Party and Congress (O) dissolved themselves to merge with the Janata Party. Chandrasekhar (who later became Prime Minister) was the president of and its symbol was a farmer and plough," the Chief Minister said. "It was a broad alliance of democratic forces that came together to fight the Congress and our tie-up was with the Janata Party and not the Jan Sangh. It was a time when the Congress had emasculated  all democratic institutions," he added. 

Pinarayi said that the kind of atrocities the Congress had unleashed in other places like West Bengal under Siddharth Shankar Ray was sought to be replicated in areas like Tholambra, Mambaram and Narikode in Kannur.

Even when there was an alliance with the Janata Party, Pinarayi said the CPM had openly opposed the RSS. "It was also the time the CPM was trying to defend itself against the RSS attacks," the Chief Minister said.

He also hinted that he had not received any support from the RSS during the 1977 polls. "Koothuparamba  is the land of the Thalassery riot martyr U K Kumaran. That is a place where the RSS had always, then and now, considered the CPM its biggest foe," Pinarayi said. He had then defeated the RSP candidate Abdul Khader by a majority of nearly 4500 votes; both the RSP and CPI were part of the Congress-led front then.

Pinarayi then sought to turn the tables on Congress. He said KPCC president K Sudhakaran, who was then a youth wing leader of the Janata Party, was the election committee office-bearer of Jan Sangh  leader K G Marar, the candidate of the anti-Congress alliance fielded in Uduma. Sudhakaran's party Indian National Congress (O) had merged with the Janata Party.

The Janata Party experiment failed and Morarji Desai had to resign when the dual membership of Jan Sangh members became an issue. Pinarayi said the CPM quickly severed even this tenuous link it had with rightwing forces in 1977. In the polls held soon after in 1979, in four Assembly constituencies, Pinarayi said E M S had openly declared that the Left did not want a single RSS vote. "I was there when EMS made the declaration. We won all the four seats (Kasaragod, Thalassery, Tiruvalla, and Parassala)," Pinarayi said.

The very next year, when both Lok Sabha and Assembly elections took place simultaneously, Pinarayi said that known RSS leaders like O Rajagopal and K G Marar were fielded as part of the Congress-led UDF. He said O Rajagopal was the Congress-led Front's candidate from the Kasaragod Lok Sabha constituency. K G Marar was the UDF candidate for the Peringalam Assembly constituency. That same year, Pinarayi said K Sudhakaran was a Janata Party candidate in the Congress-led Front and was defeated. 

Why Left joined forces with Sangh Parivar in 1977? 

Ayyappan R 

Published: June 28, 2019 

Former Kerala BJP President KG Marar, CPI(M) leader T Sivadasa Menon, former BJP President LK Advani and BJP MLA O Rajagopal....

Both the UDF and LDF members in the Kerala Assembly might stand a corruption charge brought against them but not an assertion, even a vague insinuation, that their party once had a dalliance with the Sangh Parivar. An affair with the BJP is considered the worst form of insult by both the fronts.

Therefore, it was no wonder when the ruling party members sprang to their feet shouting, screaming and banging their desks when Muslim League MLA T V Ibrahim said in the Assembly on Friday that the CPM was in an open alliance with the Sangh Parivar forces during the 1977 elections.

“K G Marar was the candidate of the CPM-led front in Uduma. You know who Marar was? He was the state's Jan Sangh chief,” Ibrahim said. Ibrahim had more to say. “You know who inaugurated the convention of the CPM's Palakkad candidate T Sivadasa Menon? It was none other than L K Advani,” he said. By then all hell had broken loose on the ruling side. 

“And you know who translated Advani's speech during the CPM candidate's convention. O Rajagopal,” Ibrahim said. “This means that Pinarayi Vijayan, Marar and Advani were in the same camp in 1977,” Ibrahim added. (In 1977, Pinarayi Vijayan was CPM's Koothuparamba candidate.).

Ibrahim's provocative comments were made during the discussion on the Finance Bill in the Assembly on Friday. The LDF backbenchers were so worked up that deputy speaker V Sasi, who was in the chair,  allowed CPM MLA M Swaraj to make a point of order.

“The Kondotty MLA (Ibrahim) has been uttering falsehoods and trying to mislead the House. This is not a place where he can speak all that comes to his mind,” Swaraj shouted over the din. “What is your point,” the opposition heckled him. He did not get to the point but said: “We know who went with whom in 1980.”

The young CPM MLA was perhaps hinting at how Congress (I) and Janata Party, of which Jan Sangh was a.member, came together to prop up the C H Muhammad Koya ministry, which did not last for more than two months, after P K Vasudevan resigned as Chief Minister in 1979.

Though he wanted the lie to be removed from the Assembly records, Swaraj did not clarify what the lie was. The opposition members kept asking him to elaborate on 1977.

Soon enough they got the details. C K Nanu of Janata Dal (S) gave a spirited and emotional defence of the Left's alliance with the Jan Sangh during the 1977 elections that came after Emergency was imposed. Nanu was with the Socialist Party then. Stunning the ruling benches, the octogenarian spoke highly of the veteran BJP leader Marar, painting him as a martyr worthy of reverence.

“K G Marar did not contest as a Jan Sangh candidate but as a Janata Party candidate. It was the need of the hour then. The world's largest democracy was under threat and we had to save it,” Nanu said. Jan Sangh had then dissolved and merged with the Janata Party to fight Indira Gandhi.

Janata Party in Kerala then included both socialists and Jan Sangh, the BJP's earlier avatar. At the national level, the CPM was part of an alliance headed by the Janata Party.

Nanu felt that the Muslim League should have actually stood by the Left alliance in 1977. “Except in Kerala, Muslims across the coTurkman Gate in Delhi you chose to stand with those who imposed the Emergency,” he told the Muslim League members.

(Hundreds who had gathered at Turkman Gate in 1976 to protest against the demolition of their houses by the Indira Gandhi government at the height of Emergency was shot at and brutalised by the police. Twenty civilians had died in the firing.)

Nanu said that it were the sacrifices of people like Marar that saved democracy. “They were the ones who suffered and went to jail. They were the ones who risked their lives to keep democracy alive,” Nanu, a former Congressman-turned-socialist, said. “You and I can speak so freely because people like Marar were willing to suffer,” he said....

CPI(M) has never allied with RSS: Kodiyeri

STAFF REPORTERKALPETTA:APRIL 27, 2016 00:00 IST

UPDATED: SEPTEMBER 09, 2016 00:05 IST

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CPI(M) State secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan has said that his party never had a tie-up with the RSS or the BJP. He was inaugurating an election campaign meeting at Panamaram on Tuesday.

Denying the allegation of some senior Congress leaders that the CPI(M) had made alliance with the RSS during the Emergency, Mr. Balakrishnan said his party had allied with the Janata Party – not with the RSS or the Jan Sangh – to dethrone the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in the 1977 general election after the Emergency.

The Congress leaders had made such an allegation to cover up their clandestine alliance with the BJP in the Assembly election, Mr. Balakrishnan said. The voters in the State would oust the Oommen Chandy government on May 19 and it would be the answer for the alliance, he said.

The Left political parties had a significant role to make the State a role model for secularism in the country, Mr. Balakrishnan said.

Next is the details of how 

@cpimspeak

 gave helped them grow at national level!

1989 When VP Singh formed Govt it was CPM who supported this alliance along with BJP! 

If they had rejected alliance with the facist forces notorious Rath Yathra might have never hapnd

Sudheeran opens debate on CPI(M)-BJP ‘links’

Girish MenonAPRIL 26, 2016 00:00 IST

KPCC president raises 11 questions on the alleged ties

Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee president V.M. Sudheeran has opened a new Facebook debate on the alleged ties between the Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)] and the Bharatiya Janata Party [BJP] and the alleged attempt of the CPI(M) leadership to run a misleading campaign linking the Congress to the BJP.

To assert his point, Mr. Sudheeran has uploaded a photograph from 1989 on his Facebook page along with 11 questions on the CPI(M)’s alleged links with the BJP. Mr. Sudheeran has apparently tried to revive the decades-old allegations to reply to the recent allegations of Left Democratic Front leaders about a possible Congress-BJP understanding in the May 16 Assembly election.

Mr. Sudheeran raised questions in a chronological order beginning from the post-Emergency ties between the CPI(M) and the erstwhile Jana Sangh, the predecessor of the BJP. His questions relating to the 1977 period were mostly on the alliance of the CPI(M) with the Janata Party, in which the Jana Sangh had merged soon after the electoral victory. Through the posers, he alleged that the CPI(M) and Jana Sangh leaders had campaigned for each others’ candidates in Uduma and Koothuparamba, which were contested by the then Jana Sangh leader K.G. Marar and Pinarayi Vijayan respectively.

The photograph he posted had A.B. Vajpayee, N.T. Rama Rao, L.K. Advani, V.P. Singh, Jyoti Basu and E.M.S. Namboodiripad. Mr. Sudheeran’s main thrust was to establish the CPI(M)’s alleged links with the BJP. Referring to the withdrawal of support to the first UPA government, Mr. Sudheeran asked the CPI(M) leadership whether it could deny the fact that the party had voted along with the BJP to bring down that government.

He asked the CPI(M) whether the party was not responsible for helping the BJP by splitting secular votes in the recent Bihar elections.

Through the posers, Mr. Sudheeran also alleged that the CPI(M) leaders had maintained a studied silence when the Lok Sabha discussed the allegations of Kirti Azad against Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitely.

Why Left joined forces with Sangh Parivar in 1977? 

Ayyappan R

 Published: June 28, 2019 03:32 PM IST...

Read more at: https://www.onmanorama.com/news/kerala/2019/06/28/left-and-sangh-parivar-in-1977.html

Recalling JP: Freedom Fighter Who Dented Indira Gandhi, Made BJP And Non-Congress Socialism Mainstream

Much credit for the rise of the Jana Sangh, the predecessor of the BJP, to the status of a mainstream political party goes to its collaboration with JP, a lifelong socialist who had taken a Gandhian turn, in the 1970s and the Lohia socialists and Lok Dal in the 1960s.

Jaya Prakash Narayan File Photo

Outlook Magzine 

Vikas Pathak

UPDATED: 08 OCT 2021 4:16 PM

On this very day in 1979, Jaya Prakash Narayan, veteran freedom fighter and the leader of the JP movement of 1974-75 against Indira Gandhi’s government, passed away.

Forty-two years after his death, BJP president JP Nadda took to Twitter early on Friday morning to pay tributes to JP in Hindi. Roughly translated, his tweet said, “Tributes on the death anniversary of Loknayak Jaya Prakash Narayan, who gave a call for ‘Total Revolution’ to rid the nation of an unfettered government that clamped the Emergency. Such a leader who devoted his entire life to defending the motherland and democracy will always be a role model for us.”

Indeed, much credit for the rise of the Jana Sangh, the predecessor of the BJP, to the status of a mainstream political party goes to its collaboration with JP, a lifelong socialist who had taken a Gandhian turn, in the 1970s and the Lohia socialists and Lok Dal in the 1960s.

“Participation in the JP movement is widely held to be the Jana Sangh’s entry into the cherished space of civil liberties,” political scientist Sajjan Kumar told Outlook.

In 1963, the socialists and the Jana Sangh fielded joint candidates on four seats in Lok Sabha by-polls to challenge the Congress’ formidable vote bank of the so-called upper castes, Muslims and Dalits. The new alliance had an alternative vote bank: the small urban and largely ‘upper caste’ support base of the Jana Sangh and the rising Hindu ‘backward caste’ base of the socialists. Ram Manohar Lohia won the poll as the joint opposition candidate from Farrukhabad in UP. However, the Jana Sangh’s Deen Dayal Upadhyaya lost his election despite the alliance.

In 1967, the socialists, the Jana Sangh, the Rashtriya Kranti Dal of Charan Singh -- who had left the Congress the same year -- and even the CPI (M) came together in states like UP and Bihar in the legislative assemblies to form short-lived governments on the plank of ‘anti-Congressism’.

“The anti-Congress alliances that the Jana Sangh and the socialists wove together also marked the rise of the backward castes as an electoral force. These groups and the Jana Sangh’s small Hindutva base could together become electorally viable,” Sajjan Kumar contends.

However, JP, who had quit politics long back, was involved in social, constructive, work in these days.

His re-entry into public life took place in 1974, when a broad student opposition group, the Chhatra Sangharsh Samiti, protesting against the Congress government in Bihar met him to seek his leadership for their movement.

KN Govindacharya says this happened just after students tried to storm the Patna Legislative Assembly on March 18, 1974. The police resorted to firing, which killed some students.

Talking to Outlook at VP House in the national capital, he jogs his memory to recall details of the fateful day, which would lead to the iconic JP movement against Indira Gandhi. Govindacharya was on the spot as an RSS pracharak.

“The police seemed to be getting the upper hand. Just then, a young activist called Akshay Singh, a resident of Palamu, drove a bus filled with stones into the ground that separated the road from the assembly building. This tilted the scales yet again in favour of the students,” Govindacharya recalls. He remembers a girl from Maharashtra, Lata Kamat, who stepped out right between the clashing police and students, not fearing for her life. However, in the police firing, three students were killed.

After this, Govindacharya went to meet Jaya Prakash Narayan, with whom he had worked in Bihar draught relief some years back, asking him to join the movement. A delegation of 13 youth met JP a second time.

JP initially said, Govindacharya recalls, that the protesters were violent people. Govindacharya defended them, claiming Congress ally CPI and the ruling party were behind the chaos. As “proof”, he asked JP why only the offices of Pradeep and Searchlight, both pro-agitation, were torched, and not those of pro-government publications Aryavarta and Indian Nation.

JP agreed to lead the movement, making non-violence a condition.

JP’s entry added a spark to the movement, from Patna to Delhi. The tide was beginning to turn against Indira Gandhi, as JP addressed mammoth rallies. To add to the Prime Minister’s discomfiture, the Allahabad High Court held her election to Rai Bareli null and void. The Supreme Court gave her limited relief: she could attend Parliament but not vote there.

With the situation deteriorating, Indira Gandhi imposed the Emergency on the midnight of June 25, 1975, and opposition leaders were jailed. Pre-censorship of the press also began. Controversial policies like forced vasectomy and the bulldozing of Turkman Gate in Delhi were carried out.

Fresh elections were ordered in 1977 and Emergency revoked.

For the 1977 polls, the Jana Sangh, Charan Singh’s Bharatiya Lok Dal, the breakaway Congress faction Congress (O) and the Swatantra Party merged themselves to form the Janata Party, which defeated the Congress in the Lok Sabha elections held post-Emergency.

Internal ideological contests, however, ensured that the Janata government did not have smooth sailing. JP himself passed away in 1979.

The party was rocked by demands that Jana Sangh ministers could not also be part of the RSS at the same time. Eventually, the party split and Indira Gandhi stormed back to power. The Jana Sangh component of the Janata Party formed the BJP in 1980, and Vajpayee as party president sought to evoke the legacy of JP as a beacon for the party for some years. But, the massive defeat of 1984 convinced the BJP that its ideological distinctiveness could not be discarded.

However, the heady 1970s weren’t all that JP was about. He was one of the architects of the Congress Socialist Party formed within the Congress in 1934 to steer it in a more socialist direction. He acquired an aura of his own during the Quit India Movement. When the top leadership was arrested, JP and Aruna Asaf Ali continued to keep the movement alive underground.

Jawaharlal Nehru invited JP to be a part of his Cabinet, but JP wasn’t interested in holding office. Within years, he announced his retirement from politics and became a full-fledged social activist, practising Gandhian Sarvodaya and lending his helping hand for constructive work.

JP’s lasting political impact, however, has consisted in his acting as a bridge between the socialists and the Jana Sangh.

He initially had “misgivings” that the RSS was “communal”, Govindacharya told Outlook. “He asked me why there were no Muslim RSS pracharaks and I answered that even his Sarvodaya had just two Muslim volunteers. Does that make you communal, I asked him?”

Later, however, JP at the height of the Congress-JP movement duel even declared at a programme: “If the RSS is fascist, so am I.”

Nadda’s tweet is the most recent reminder of the debt that not only the socialist parties but also the BJP owe to JP.